Eight months of cruel competition has ended and the IEM Season VIII World Championship finally arrives. Regional qualifiers and winners from IEM tournaments in Shanghai, New York, Singapore, Sao Paulo, and Cologne will compete at IEM Katowice for a winner-takes-all prize pool of $100,000. That’s right, this isn’t your normal tournament – the entire prize pool will be awarded to the first-place winner! The tension will be palpable and competitors will have to fight tooth and nail in order to survive. The remaining spots for the initial Ro16 have been decided through the Open Qualifier Bracket on March 13, with the final bracket drawn shortly afterward. Dear and HyuN have advanced to the main event, moving up in theWCS Standings. Check out the official website to learn more about the IEM Season VIII – World Championship, and keep track of Blizzard at IEM Katowice here. Live bracket updates can be found on Liquipedia. You can travel to the Spodek arena in Katowice, Poland to watch the tournament live, or watch online at StarCraft2.com/WCS, which also has start times listed in theSchedule. Which player do you think will win the prize of $100,000? Make a guess!

Blizzard is working to introduce more diverse maps to the WCS/Ladder 2014. Below is Blizzard’s post in the official StarCraft 2 forum. Check it out. We’ve been working together with our partners on this area, and would like to get your feedback before finalizing the details. The main goals are:1. We’d like to have a bigger map diversity. We know some players and pros don’t like the idea of map diversity because it’s difficult to learn new strategies on different maps, but we strongly believe that this creates a better experience in both keeping the game feeling fresh as well as fun to watch. Read the full post to get more details on new maps for 2014 I StarCraft2.com Source: http://wcs.battle.net

With Halloween closer and closer, Blizzard has announced to hold a pumpkin carving contest. See the official announcement below: The Halloween season has finally arrived, and we’re ready to cut straight to the heart of the holiday. If you're dying to pick up a knife and hack, gash, slash, and jab at something, then you might be excited to hear that as of October 17, Blizzard's 2013 Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest has officially begun! Unleash your magical axes, psi blades, chitinous claws, and other creative cutlery to carve up Blizzard-themed jack-o’-lanterns of epic awesomeness. If you’re unclear as to what epic awesomeness looks like in the flesh, you can check out last year’s winners for some inspiration. We’ll choose five of the grandest Cucurbita to earn one (1) Diablo III: Book of Tyrael. Don’t delay; start carving right away! The eleventh annual pumpkin carving contest ends on October 29, so be sure to check out the contest page for rules and eligibility and get straight to slicing.

A long Q&A session about the 2014 WCS was just held. During the session, Kim Phan, Blizzard's senior eSports manager, gave responses to some of community's concerns about the future of the WCS in 2014. The questions raised by TL.net members aim to find out whether there will be a region locking in 2014, will the format of the league change, will WCS incorporate more non-WCS tournaments in its system and what will remain the same compared to this year. While not many of the inquiries are answered definitively, bits and pieces of information are nevertheless provided to help build a rough sketch on what WCS 2014 will be like. Possible changes: Some form of residency restriction either through granting special seeds, forcing more offline play or giving points to ladder participantsThe possibility of making all of premier league played in studio and the costs of it are being consideredA way to implement teams based on player's performances and create a possible exhibition team tournament Confirmed changes: The WCS system will be simplified and made more linear. Qualifiers will be held first, then challenger league, then premierExtend the WCS storylines to other tournamentsTuning the schedule to allow for more non-WCS tournaments around the yearNew challenger format. Details unconfirmed yetSeasonal finals will not be continuing in their current form Things to stay the same: The league will have three regions once again: Europe, America and KoreaWCS points will be awarded to determine global rankingsThe winners of the Challenger bracket stage will be seeded into the new Premier league. This refutes the concerns previously expressed by a some players Source: TL.net

After defeating the former Code S champion Jjakji in four maps, Trap has become the second Protoss advancing to the WCS Season 3 finals. Trap was sent down to the relegation bracket after a painfull 0-3 loss to Dear in the quarter finals and he was joined there by fellow Protosses PartinG and Rain as well as former Code S winner Jjakji. The SouL player was paired with PartinG in his first match and after three maps he moved on the the 5th place final. There he was joined by Jjakji who had also taken a 2-1 victory over Rain and the fight for the last Korea seed for the Seaosn 3 finals ensued. Trap opened strong on Derelict Watcher and Polar Night and soon enough was leading in the series 2-0. Down by a pair and a game away from elimination, Jjakji mustered his strength to lessen the score gap on Frost but he could not bring it to a tie and a fifth game. Trap's recovery was quick and as Yeonsu went in his favor, the SouL Protoss was given the ticket to Toronto. Three more matches will be held before WCS Korea Season 3 comes to an end. Today, the semi finals take place as Dear plays Maru at 11:00 CET and Soulkey meets soO in a Zerg mirror two hours later. The grand finals will be held on October 19th and the winner takes home a $20,000 purse. http://www.gosugamers.net

The wait is finally over! Seeds have been given out, groups have been set, and players are preparing to claim the first “Heart of the Swarm” Code S Championship. The 32 players, made up of both new and old faces, seek to be acknowledged as the best and although we might sound like a broken record, this season is shaping up to be the toughest one yet!The road to victory begins on April 4th, 6:10PM (KST).- For Code S Ro32, players are divided into 4 tiers (reset for 2013) * Tier 1: The Top 8 of 2013 GSL Season 1 * Tier 2: 2013 GSL Point Ranking 1-8 * Tier 3: 2013 GSL Point Ranking 9-16 * Tier 4: 2013 GSL Point Ranking 17-24 The Code S Seeds for this season will go to SK Telecom T1 Rain and STX Soul Last.EG_Stephano (Ilyes Satouri) has forfeited his Code S spot for this season. To replace him, a Wild Card Group was played made up of the 3rd place finishers in each Up&Down Group. Because of our studio moving to Gangnam from Mok-Dong, official referees went to the team house of each player and the Wild Card Group was held online.MVP_Keen took first place and secured his position in Code S. Code S Ro32 GroupsThe Champion and runner-up from the past season are able to choose one player to be in their group from Tier 4.- 2013 GSL Season 1 Champion, RorO has selected Crazy for his group.- 2013 GSL Season 1 Runner-up, Symbol has selected Shine for his group. We now enter a new era of competition in Starcraft 2 and looking at these groups, it seems like this is the perfect way to start it off. As always, thank you for all your support and we will do our best to make this another great season!

The regular season for GSTL 2013 Season 1 has officially begun. This time, the Heart of the Swarm will be used in both of the preseason and regular season. Competition Format Introduction:1. Regular SeasonEight teams compete in the round robin. At last, the top 5 teams can enter the playoff. 2. The PlayoffsFive teams compete: The winner in the regular season advances into the finals of the playoffs directly. In round 1, the team in the 5th place should battles with the team in the 4th place and the winner will advance to the round 2 to compete with the team of the 3rd place. And in round 3, the round 2 winner compete with the team of the 2nd place in regular season. The round 3 winner enters the finals. Teams: Prime Incredible Miracle StarTale FXOpen e-Sports MVP New Star HoSeo AZUBU Axiom-Acer Map Pool (two new maps added)GSL Whirlwind SEGSL Bel’ shir Vestige SEGSl Akilon FlatsGSL IcarusGSL TPW Silver Sands (new)GSL DMZ (non-military area) (new) The total prize pool is ₩92,000,000, divided among participants as follows:

In order to celebrate the release of Heart of the Swarm, the Special, a Heart of the Swarm tournament held by KeSPA in Korea, will start on March 23. It is particular because each of KeSPA’s SC coaches gets a chance to draft their dream team from all of the KeSPA team rosters.SPL The special match team and match info ▼ Match info The Special opening title

With the end of the GSL up and downs, the final GSL code S list was also released. Protoss was still weak. Only 5 players advanced into code S. Terran got 13 players. Zerg was still the most popular. There were 14 players in the list. The competition will start in a week.32 code S players will be divided in to 8 teams and start the first round match. Here is the team information and the list of the whole code S players.

GomTV finally releases the group list of GSL 2013 Season 1 Up and Downs. The event starts on January 6th, 2013 and the first Up and Downs of the New Year surprises most players. Jaedong, Flash and MC are all in Group A. It’s cool to see combat among these three top players.

NSL 2012 Season 2 has been ended online events in the first stage. In the second stage, there will be 16 Starcraft 2 professional players attending the match, in order to compete for 8 players who can enter the third stage. NSL 2012 Season 2 Offline Events will be held on December 24th, 2012. The completely new rules will make the match full of watching focus. The match includes team group, team battle, Ro8 upper bracket, Ro4, Final and 3rd/4th determination match. Very wonderful!

GSL2012 Blizzard Cup is held by GomTV. In the same time, it plans to look back at and to conclude the year 2012, providing three kinds of Tour Awards, Best match, Most Popular Team and Most Popular Player. Format:10 players will be divided in 2 groups of 5.Best of 3 matches, round robin.The 3 top players of each group advance to the playoffs.Group A 1st vs (Group A 3rd vs Group B 2nd)Group B 1st vs (Group B 3rd vs Group A 2nd) Players of the tournament:Mvp - GSL Front three of GSL rankingSniper – Front three of GSL rankingDongRaeGu - Front three of GSL rankingLeenock - The Champion of IGN ProLeague Season 5viOLet - The Second of The Champion of IGN ProLeague Season 5Rain - The Champion of 2012 OnGameNet Starleague Season 1PartinG - 2012 Battle.net World ChampionshipLife - MLG 2012 Fall ChampionshipHerO - DreamHack Open Winter 2012PartinG* - World Cyber Games 2012 (Replace by the fourth of GSL ranking)

The 2012 Battle.net World Championship is the newest global e-sport organized by Blizzard Entertainment. Mass - selecting from about 30 countries and regions and going through qualification from country, continent to Grand Finals, the strongest Star Craft II players for BWC comes out.32 SC2 players would compete in the World Championship, for the 100,000 US dollars reward. (The total reward of BWC is 250,000 US Dollars.)

On May 6, in the SPL Round 5 Week one, KT battled with Samsung KHAN. Flash from KT was the second player to appear on the stage. He defeated Samsung KHAN’s three excellent players RorO, Reality and JandBi, getting three continuous victories. After the match ended, Flash said in the interview about the lost in GSL: It’s a pity, but I will perform better in future. Q: How do you feel about your team winning four matches continuously?Flash: The SWL format is really great. And I am glad to win three matches continuously. What’s more, our team has caught up with other teams on ranking. It’s exciting. Q: KT doesn’t perform very steadily, right?Flash: During the worst time of our team, I didn’t play as the mainstay well. But now, maybe we will lose but we won’t lose in a row. We will recover soon. Though it’s not easy, I hope we can get continuous victory again. Q: Are you satisfied with your performance today?Flash: Everything went smoothly today. I did nothing special, just as before. Q: Could you say something about being knocked out of GSL?Flash: I paid much attention to the first match, but INnoVation also made a good preparation. As for the match with PartinG, he also prepared better than me. It’s a pity to lose! But I will perform better in future. I hope to meet them again in the next season. Q: Why do you keep thinking about mechanized strategy?Flash: I have created many openings based on the mechanized strategy. This time, I have also designed some strategies with my own style. I want to show you them as soon as possible. Q: After this round, the Player with Most Wins will be decided, right?Flash: it is still not clear. You know, there are many powerful players. Whatever, I will fight for the title “the player with most wins”. Q: Do you want to play as the pioneer?Flash: Yes. I think our coach will let me do so even I don’t ask. And one strange thing is that my win rate is the highest when playing as the pioneer. Thus, this time, I need to play as the pioneer just for one or two times (laugh). Q: Anything else to say?Flash: It is truly a pity for me to be knocked out of GSL, but I can play well next time. The lost that day made me sad but also gave me courage. I will prove my ability if entering the group of death. I hope the group of death will appear again next time!

Lately, a female player appeared in Prime, the Korean Esport team. Her ID is barbieprime (YOORA-LEE). Why did she give up her job and join the Starcraft 2 team? Let’s take a look at the interview below to find the answers. Q: What’s your understanding of Starcraft 2?A：Actually, I played Starcraft2 in senior 1, but I had a real understanding on Starcraft 2 from January 1 of this year. It has been four months. A: I met the present Prime coach “Park Oi Sik” long time ago. At that time, I often played games with him in the Internet bar. He always asked me to join the professional team and I like to challenge and adventure. After consideration, I gave up my job. Trying a new profession is quite funny. Q: What did you do before joining professional team?A: I was the airline stewardess in a Korean airline company for about a year after graduation. Q: What are your relatives’ and friends’ views on your joining in SC2 team?A: At the beginning, I thought they would be against my decision. But my father said to me, “Whatever you do, I will support you.” I was moved. My elder sister is a full –time dresser, and she will help me with my make - up if large events come. Haha. Q: Why choose Protoss?A: I chose Terran to experience the game before. However, I feel guards of Protoss are cute over time. Q: Everybody saw your pet dog at the rebroadcast of GSTL on March 30th. Introduce him for us.A: His name is Barbie and he has accompanied me for over 3 years. In fact, the coach allows me to take him to the tournament. I don’t want him to be lonely at home. Q: What’s your future goal as one the few female players in SC2 team?A: I want to become the top player that draws all Sc2 fans’ attention. Currently, I just want to beat all members in the team.